This past Saturday we were invited to go play Whirlyball in Edmonds with a friend from church and some of her fellow civil engineering associates. Whirlyball is a mixture of bumper cars, lacrosse, and basketball. Each team has 5 players, who drive around in bumper cars and try to score goals by using a scoop to pick up the wiffleball and shoot it at a 15" hole at the height of a basketball goal. You're not allowed to use anything but your scoop to pick up the ball, unless it gets smashed and has to be fixed by hand, or if it falls in your car. You also have to stay buckled the entire time.

I'd never played it before, but Troy said it was a lot of fun the two times he played it with his co-workers at his old job. We decided to go since we didn't really have any other important plans. We carpooled with our church friend and arrived around 1:45. We played probably 6 or 7 games at 15 minutes each or almost three hours until 4:30.

It took a while for me to really get the hang of driving the car, which didn't have brakes or a normal steering wheel. I also had a hard time figuring out how hard to swing my hand when trying to shoot and I ended up throwing the ball at the ceiling a few times. During the last game though, I just sat at mid-court usually by myself and waited for passes from my teammates. Then I would go down to our goal and I made 5 straight shots, one of which was backhanded from directly underneath the goal. I was pretty proud of that one. It was a lot of fun and I'm glad we got to go with our church friend. Unfortunately, the belt buckle bruised my right hip pretty badly and both Troy and I have a few other bruises on our legs too. It was worth it though.